The Wood Nymph, the Cranky Saint

There was a brief hesitation over who should escort the bride to the altar. For a moment I was afraid the duchess would ask Dominic, but she seemed to decide that that would push her luck too far, for to my surprise she asked me.

“So how did you finally decide to accept Prince Ascelin?” I asked in a low voice as we stood at the door of the chapel, waiting for everyone to settle down and for the music to begin.

She squeezed my arm and smiled. “I’d always intended to marry him. I know you realized that all along.”

If she thought I had guessed far more than I in fact had, I was not going to disabuse her.

“That’s why I had my wizard make the great horned rabbits, of course, so I could have an excuse to invite him into the kingdom. After refusing him five years ago, I couldn’t very well send him a message by the pigeons that I had changed my mind! I had to have a chance to see him, to hunt with him, to make sure his own heart hadn’t changed.

“When we’d known each other in the City, all I saw was someone extremely handsome, an extremely good dancer, who seemed to have a much too priggish moral sense for any young member of the aristocracy. He’d told me he was a renowned hunter, but I’d never even seen him hunt. I had to turn him down. But in the years since then … Of course, his seeking sanctuary, when Dominic wanted to kill him, I at first thought was cowardice. But then I realized it was both courage and good moral sense, and maybe I need more of the latter myself.”

She laughed up at me, then turned it into a frown. “There is one thing I still don’t know. I’d had my wizard make the horned rabbits so Ascelin and I could hunt them together, but why did he appear in Yurt even before I’d had a chance to send him a message?”

I smiled. “Once you’re married, I’m sure he’ll tell you.”

It was almost like a fairy tale, in which the handsome peasant boy woos and wins the lovely princess, except that Prince Ascelin had never been a peasant, and Diana had never imagined that he was.

The chapel’s brass choir began then to play, and I tucked her hand firmly under my arm and walked with her down the aisle. Joachim, looking sober, and Nimrod, looking overwhelmingly glad, waited for us by the altar.

III

The service was short but dignified. The duchess glowed, and Nimrod’s rough clothes became trivial compared with his happiness. Dominic sat impassively throughout, but at the end he did step forward to be the first of the spectators to kiss the bride.

In the talking and laughing that followed, I heard him say to young Hugo, “You know, I may indeed take you up on your offer to go back to the City with you.”

I slipped away from the knot of people around the altar with no attention to spare for Dominic. I had an idea.

In the great hall the kitchen staff was still setting up the tables for the wedding feast. I went quickly by them with a nod for Gwen and into the room where we kept the magic glass telephone.

It took me several tries, including a call to the wizards’ school, before I was able to get the magic coordinates for the kingdom far up in the eastern mountains where Elerius was Royal Wizard. Then it took several minutes for him to come to the phone. I realized my heart was beginning to pound, as though I might have only a few moments before the monster was on us, and the time was almost gone.

At first Elerius didn’t remember me, although he tried politely to act as though he did. When he finally realized that, in spite of the white beard, I was the Daimbert, three classes behind him, who had always seemed so unpromising to the masters, he surprised me by congratulating me with apparently complete sincerity on the invention of the far-seeing telephone. But he then had trouble under standing what I wanted.

“It’s been made with the old magic,” I repeated, willing the tiny figure in the telephone base to know the solution. His black eyebrows made triangles over his eyes, which were a light brown, almost tawny yellow, and which I had always found disturbing in spite of their inevitably helpful expression. “Something similar to the spells you taught in that course at the school this spring.”

“And you’ve already tried shooting it and paralyzing it?”

“That’s what I said. And nothing works.”

Elerius thought this over, looking troubled. He had always been very kind to the younger wizardry students and indeed seemed anxious, unlike most older wizards, to be friendly with everyone. If we hadn’t always been so jealous of him, we probably would have liked him.

“There isn’t a single spell to give sticks and bones the semblance of life,” he said at last. “Your predecessor’s magic certainly falls into a certain category of spells, the same category I learned from the old magician here, but at a certain point every renegade wizard who tries to create a living being must go about it differently.”

“And there isn’t a universal spell to dissolve such creatures?”

“I don’t think so, Daimbert, or if so I certainly don’t know it.”

“How about the teachers at the school?” I asked urgently. “I heard-” I considered trying to explain about Nimrod and gave it up. “I heard that, some years ago, a renegade wizard made a whole army of creatures out of hair and bone, and the school was able to catch them and destroy them.”

“I’m afraid,” said Elerius dryly, running a hand over his black beard, “that that was the old magician here in my kingdom. The masters of the school won’t know any spells against creatures more complex than what young Evrard made. The magician had been in hiding ever since, until I found him up in the mountains only a month before he died. He knew he didn’t have long, and he taught me the spells before he went.”

I closed and opened my eyes. “All right. Thank you. I’ll see what I can improvise. Just promise me one thing.”

“Certainly.”

“If I fail, I’ll telephone you again-or I’ll leave word to have someone else call if the monster kills me. Should that happen, swear to me you’ll get the best help possible, from the school or from any other wizards there may be who know the old magic. You’ve got to come to Yurt and stop this thing.”

He nodded slowly. “I promise to try. But I’m confident the creator of the far-seeing telephone will find a way himself.”

I leaned my forehead against the stone wall once he hung up, wishing I felt as confident. My predecessor was gone far beyond where I could ask his advice. If the best wizardry student the school had ever had, one invited back to teach a magic none of the older masters knew, didn’t know any spells more complicated than those to make great horned rabbits, I had no idea how I was going to stop the monster. But somehow I had to.

It sounded as though the wedding party was coming down from the chapel. I went to find Evrard, wondering if it would be more unsuitable to leave before the wedding feast or irresponsible to stay for it. But then a huge crash resounded in the great hall, followed by a scream.

The scream was repeated. It was a woman’s voice.

In the chapel stairway I could hear the shouts of the knights of Yurt. But they couldn’t help with what I knew I would find.

I raced into the great hall as Evrard and the knights burst in from the other side. In the middle of the hall, between the rose-decorated trestle tables, stood Gwen, clutching her baby, a trayful of silverware at her feet and an overturned bench blocking her retreat. Before her was the monster.

“Good,” said Evrard.

“What do you mean, good?” I almost screamed at him.

The great hall was instantly a scene of panic, as women and men both yelled, some fighting to retreat up the chapel stairs as others fought to get out, and those already in the great hall ran in all directions. Only Gwen stood frozen, and a creature as tall as a man but twice as broad slowly advanced toward her, its undead eyes staring fixedly at the baby.

One of the royal knights leaped forward, but the monster lifted an arm, almost lazily, and dashed him to the flagstones.